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Monday September 16, 2013 5:52 AM

When addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
New York Times op-ed last week, too many commentators have focused on his contempt for
President Barack Obama and his policies. Enough has been said on that. I want to direct our
attention to Putin’s most important point.

Putin asserted, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional."

He is right, of course, even though he doesn’t understand why. Ever since 1776, American
principles of freedom have been extremely dangerous to tyrants. Ever since then, no one can argue
that all regimes are created equal. Some are better than others and ours is the best, and we have
been singing this tune ever since, Putin’s wish to the contrary notwithstanding.

Until America was founded, no one had ever asserted the monumental fact — termed by us a
self-evident truth — that human beings are capable of governing themselves. The universal
natural rights to which our Founders appealed, the principles of equality and liberty, applied to
all human beings. This is what is meant by American exceptionalism.

Before the time of the Americans, ordinary human beings did not think their conditions could be
changed except by accident or force. They also did not think that their minds were good
enough to know those things necessary for self-government and human happiness; they did not think
their minds were free.

Of course, the kings and aristocrats encouraged such thinking. They thought they had a God-given
right to rule others because they thought that they were so superior in talents and capacities —
due to the better blood running in their veins — as to be able to treat the ordinary person as if
he were a dog, incapable of giving his consent to be ruled or of becoming something better.

At some point (helped by the printing press and the dissemination of books) these ordinary folks
began to understand that their conditions could become better, in part because they realized that
they could think for themselves, that their minds were created free. This made the conditions
of human freedom possible. The old world became a new world.

These new world folks decided to found a political order, a new regime, a Novus Ordo Seclorum
(see the Great Seal of the USA) that was based on this understanding of what human beings are. They
thought this to be the most revolutionary political development in human history. They thought good
government could now be established based on reflection and choice, rather than accident and
force.

They now knew that ordinary folks were capable — and knew themselves to be capable — of rising
to the level of equality necessary for self-government. While the Founders and the Framers did not
think human beings were angels, they did think they were good enough to govern themselves.
And, in theory, this applied to all human beings, not just to those who called themselves
Americans. All human beings have a right to be free, including Kenyans and Hungarians and
Russians.

So they constituted themselves as a new regime that would take into consideration the capacity
of human beings to reflect and choose. And even though they asserted the right of folks to
govern themselves, they at the same time constituted themselves in such a way as to make their own
rule over themselves as reasonable as possible. In other words, the people limited their rule by
dividing their own power; they appealed to men's reason rather than their will. Thomas Jefferson
said that the rule of the majority, to be rightful, must be reasonable.

Their goal was freedom, not majority tyranny. So the Americans consented to be a
constitutional people.

Americans are an exceptional people because we saw this about human nature and formed our
government accordingly. Governments are instituted to secure these rights. Government's purpose now
is to secure our God-given liberty. And, of course, it goes almost without saying that when
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish
it.

No wonder Putin is afraid.

My Hungarian-born father once said you can live more like a human being in this country than in
any other. This is why other people from different regimes still are able to note that all
Americans look like they are singing when they are coming over the hill. All human beings
want to learn to sing. No wonder Putin is terrified.

Peter W. Schramm is a senior fellow at the Ashbrook Center and professor of political science
at Ashland University.